opinion
Connected
Thinking
Evoke’s technical director Dean Ward’s reflections
following Grant Thornton’s Internet of Things (IoT)
panel discussion
By Dean Ward, Technical Director Evoke
In June and July 2016 we enjoyed
numerous blue sky talks and exhibitions
as part of the International Festival
Business 2016, with commercial director
Neil Clark claiming his five-minutesof-fame, discussing the new business
opportunities and information available to
growing exporters such as ourselves on
North West Tonight!
A highlight for me was Grant
Thornton’s Internet of Things (IoT)
discussion, hosted at the firm’s Liverpool
office in the Royal Liver Building as part
of The Edge – a fringe festival running
alongside the main IFB programme.
I was invited to sit on a panel which
included Tim Griggs of multi-national
consultancy firm Arup and Steven Revill
of Urban Tide – a business specialising in
planning and delivering smart cities. Our
brief was to discuss the opportunities
and benefits of the IoT, along with the
potential pitfalls. Cisco – the world’s
largest networking company – has
recently increased its forecast for the
economic value created by the 'Internet of
Everything' in the year 2020 to $19 trillion.
With retail and manufacturing being two
of the industries expected to benefit from
this, it’s a topic I’m genuinely excited by.
Retail implications
The implications for retailers are
numerous. Our clients ask us design
the end to end customer experience,
and increasing connectivity between
devices – from smartphones, to tablets, to
wearables – is set to revolutionise this.
Technology is already available to
allow in-store displays and kiosks to
change to show a product that may
appeal to a customer, depending on
their smartphone browsing history, or to
monitor the amount of time spent looking
at a product and follow that up with
emails and social media adverts targeted
specifically to that customer’s interests.
By analysing the collective data,
retailers can track footfall, both in terms
of volume and actual routes taken around
the store, and see which elements of
store design are working and which need
to be changed.
The potential stumbling block to
all of this innovation taking root is: are
customers happy give up their personal
data in this way?
Arguably, as much as it may improve
the high street shopping experience, data
and connectivity used primarily benefits
sellers and the uptake and continued
development will be undoubtedly be
commercially driven.
Reduce the health service burden
The ways in which the IoT looks set to
aid the health sector promises far more
obvious social value and has the potential
to relieve pressure on strained healthcare
provision in the UK.
We talked about early adopters of
the technology and a company making a
smart plug called 3rings to send alerts to
a mobile phone if an elderly or vulnerable
person hasn’t switched on an appliance
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